


capacity

by opensummer



Series: the companions handbook [2]
Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Gen, The Oncoming Storm, Time Lord Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-09
Updated: 2014-10-09
Packaged: 2018-02-19 20:51:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2402468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opensummer/pseuds/opensummer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Companions have a certain capacity. </p><p>(You are here to <i>stop</i> him.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	capacity

_Companions obey.  
_ Not the little things, don't follow me, don't wander off, don't try that. The big things, take my hand, run, don't die. Fifteen minutes left ‘til the world ends and you, companion, you're needed. Obey, in the tone of his voice, underwritten in the Doctor's commands. How many worlds, peoples did you save? How many did you kill? You were only following orders.

You'll scream and rage when he tries to send you away. Because he needs someone to stop him. This is your purpose. _To stop him._ You'll follow TARDIS blue invitations to his death, playing the elaborate games in between. You'll bring tea to the console without commands, grab his hand when he goes too long without babbling. You're not allowed to lose your temper, because he needs you almost as much as he needs the TARDIS, he needs someone to applaud him just as he needs someone to stop him. He doesn't need to say love me. You'll do that without orders.

 _Companions hold his hand.  
_ You learn that this is love: palms together, fingers interlocked, pressure and the twin beat of two hearts, counterpoint to your human heart.

 _Companions believe in the Doctor.  
_ Faith isn't blind for you. There is a single real force that will save you every time. Sometimes those threatening you even survive the encounter. There is nothing to stop him from harming your captors (and they just made the single greatest mistake of their life, taking you). The Doctors sanity is not overwhelming and without you- _fear me_ _. I am become death, destroyer of worlds._ The Oncoming Storm is rushing in. He's not a Lonely God with you, but without? Laugh.

It unnerves your captors.

 _Companions aren't soldiers_.  
Not yet. That comes later. After the Doctor, if there is an after. He gives them the prototype for a soldier, the experiences, the reflexes (jump when he says jump), run run run. Former companions have their choice of military jobs. (Did you know that Doctor? Most militaries would kill for a companion on the payroll. He didn't of course because he doesn't keep in touch.) No guns for them yet but they have him still. It's later when the world is ending and he is gone, that they bear arms. They have to live with the consequences now, no more swanning off with a madman in a blue box, and a gun is the easier choice. The unforgivable choice. He made you soldiers and this is you, soldiering on. 

Forgive us Doctor for we have sinned. We made the choice to live with the consequences, without you.

 _Companions will not be forgotten (nor forgiven).  
_ Your room is still on the TARDIS. Did you know that? Of course not. The end of you and him was definite. No going back. But its there, tucked behind the other rooms of past companions. It's there and untouched, collapsed as needed during the various repairs he constantly runs to keep her afloat. Your room is there and pristine, just waiting for you to step back through the door. You've been immortalized in the heart of a time machine.

Funny how that doesn't feel like a compliment.

 _Companions aren't allowed to promise forever, not anymore.  
_ There will come a day when you'll look to the Doctor, across the TARDIS console, holding hands after a win and you'll promise him forever. You'll mean the rest of your life, forever in human years. You and him running for years ahead. You'll see it with perfect clarity then and know this is what should be. What will be. Do you even consider his feelings? What it would be like to watch you age and die in the heart of a time vortex? One day you'll be too frail to run, too weak to keep up. One day you'll wake aching and old, tired of being alone, knowing that this is what you want (wanted). You'll resent his youth because he won't have changed at all, and you're old now.

Better for things to end this way, abruptly, definitively. The end of an era. He measures his time by companions, eras he defines himself by your names and the things you saw, running together. In terms of the years they give him and their beginnings and ends. Time rises and falls with the years of a companion.

 _Companions leave.  
_ You'll break his hearts in the end, both of them, no matter how your particular story ends.

 _Companions cannot become_.  
Companions have a certain capacity. Each and every one of them, they have a niche in their chests where a second heart would fit so neatly. Proto-Time Lords and Ladies. He knows what, when time wraps around itself after the end of the universe, resetting, they become. Companions cannot. He was meant to be alone, knows this in the glorious twists of time lines that he could never describe to you, such a uniquely Time Lord concept. Some of you came so close, grasping the entirety of time and space, feeling the turn of planets through space. It nearly killed them, would have _(should have is not the same as will, and impossible is merely a word)_ , if he wasn't kind enough to let them go.

They could have been. Humans can adapt to anything as he has proven to you countless times. They could have been Time Lords. Could have been immortal, could have promised him forever and meant it.

And that is enough to break his hearts again.


End file.
